Norwich v West Ham: Bowen to make an impact

“And few players in the Premier League have been as good as Jarrod Bowen when it comes to doing one of the two.”

What next for Pukki?

The table really doesn’t make for good reading if you’re a Norwich fan.

Five wins, six draws and 23 defeats tell its own story and the less said about a -49 goal difference, the better.

If you want to look for positives, and there really aren’t many, then the fact that they didn’t buy a load of expensive players on big wages when they were promoted, is one of them.

They won’t suffer huge financial strain even if they do keep hold onto some of their better-paid players and as I said in my preview a couple of week ago, it will be interesting to see what happens with star man Teemu Pukki.

Now aged 32, he may decide to stick around with Norwich and try to get promoted for a third time with them. Or he may decide that his future lies at a Southampton or Brentford of this world and carry on playing Premier League football. Let’s wait and see.

Strong season from the Hammers

They won’t be playing Champions League football next term but it’s been a pretty good season for West Ham.

They’re another side who didn’t buy particularly expensive players last summer and it’s credit to David Moyes that he’s considerably improved a lot of them with Declan Rice, Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio coming to mind straight away.

Antonio has admittedly gone off the boil somewhat of late, not scoring in West Ham’s last 14 matches and only playing 19 minutes last week. That 14-game run without scoring is his longest in the Premier League by the way, as Opta remind us.

He started the season very brightly but just seems to have run out of gas. With no other out and out striker in the squad and with the former Forest man now 32 and somewhat injury-prone, they’ll need to bring in some fresh blood upfront in the summer if they’re to make progress next season.

West Ham are 1.845/6 to win which is probably what you’d expect them to be given they’re seventh, playing the side who is rock bottom and who they have a good record against. Opta tell us they’ve won their last the against Norwich, scoring eight and not conceding any in the process.

But West Ham are going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment.

Across their last four games they’ve lost three and drawn one.

They don’t have the biggest squad and when one or two players are somewhat out of form, as is the case with Antonio, they tend to pay the price.

But if backing the Hammers at odds-on isn’t too appealing, then neither is siding with Norwich in any capacity given they’ve been poor all season and have nothing to play for.

Then again, there’s nothing wrong with leaving the match odds well alone if nothing stands out.

The over/under 2.5 goals market isn’t so easy to decipher.

It’s pretty much evens the pair.

Nearly half (47%) of West Ham away games have gone overs and for Norwich home games the figure is 64.7% and that’s mostly been because Norwich have taken some real beatings this season at Carrow Road.

They’ve conceded 13 goals in their last five games which included conceding three against Brentford, Chelsea and Newcastle and four to Man City.

So you’d think that ‘overs’ would be the hot favourite here but it isn’t. That’s because Norwich scored just four goals themselves over those five matches. The other reason is that West Ham have struggled on the road of late with just one goal scored across their last four games away from home.

So it does after all make sense that it’s evens the pair.

I really like Betfair Sportsbook’s new market where you can back a player to score or assist a goal.

And few players in the Premier League have been as good as Jarrod Bowen when it comes to doing one of the two.

He’s had an excellent season with 10 goals and eight assists.

Now, it’s true that he’s done most of his hard work at the London Stadium (eight goals, four assists) and it’s also true that he hasn’t been quite so hot of late.

But he’ll have few better opportunities to add to his tally as this one against the worst side in the competition, statistically. Let’s remember they’ve conceded 13 in their last five games so you’d think they’d concede at least one here and that Bowen is more likely to be involved in it than anyone else.

The 10/11 he grabs a goal or an assist is just about the best bet I can find in a match where there are a lot of uncertainties.

I wonder if David Moyes knows about Antonio’s strong scoring record in this fixture. If he does, then he should consider playing him from the start. He’s got five goals in his last five against the Canaries with four of those coming in the same match the last time they visited Carrow Road. It’s 6/5 he scores here.

If you think Norwich are just too poor to avoid defeat here, a West Ham win with Antonio on the scoresheet comes to 2.8815/8.